Stopped by the Czech Police

Czech Police regularly do roadside checks, flagging down vehicles they fancy. A few weeks ago I was flagged down. This turned out to be a very good natured affair with a great deal of laughing. The first thing that happened was they realised that they had to change where they were standing, as I was of course in a British right-hand drive car. That done they asked for my papers, which I produced (you are required to have your licence, insurance and registration documents with you at all times). The licence was not a problem – it was a photo one and I was clearly driving. Then they came to the insurance and registration documents. There was a great deal of joshing and banter going on as two of the three policemen were clearly saying to their colleague - “You pulled over a British car, now you read the documents.” One held a paper upside down and laughed. It was obvious that I could have given them my shopping list and so long as it looked right they would have accepted it. Then they realised that my car registration number was on the documents as was my name, so they checked those. Then with a big grin they waved me on.

Driving to the Czech Republic

I apologize for not blogging recently. This is because I have been travelling. At long last I had decided to make the journey from Britain to my Czech home by car. Regular readers of this blog will know that I usually travel by plane and train. It always seemed an awful long way to come by car, especially on my own, and I never had the time to spend doing the journey in a leisurely fashion. But this time I decided to change that – there were four large boxes of books to bring over, pictures, embroideries and puppets, some clothes I had stockpiled in England and various foodstuffs impossible to get in the Czech Republic. I could hardly fit them all into the car.

I took the ferry to Dunkerque and from thence drove across Belgium to stop overnight in Aachen or Aix La Chapelle. This was a town I had visited as a teenager and then I had studied the architecture of its cathedral at university. I arrived in time to visit the Dom (shown here) – Charlemagne's great masterpiece, the first domed building north of the Alps and decorated by fabulous mosaics. In the morning I rose early and took to the streets before the town stirred. This enabled me to explore the town, medieval mingled with Art Deco and I found myself taking photographs of decorations that took my fancy on the shops, banks, the Rathaus, and even the railway station which looked like it had been decorated by someone who was stoned. I then returned to the hotel for breakfast and my departure.

I crossed Germany. This is a country which I know very little, but from the autobahn my appetite for it was whetted. I was passing through some wonderful landscapes - there was the hilly area along the Rhine with ruined castles perched on their peaks, the forests of Bavaria, twice I crossed the Donau (Danube), until I came to my second overnight's stop at Regensburg. Regensburg is another UNESCO World Heritage Site, a medieval and Renaissance city in near perfect condition. I had planned to spend a good half day there exploring, but realised there would not be enough time to do it justice and secondly that I wanted to do so in the company of my husband. So, as Regensburg is only 2.5 hrs from our Czech home I decided it would wait for either a long daytrip or an overnight stay.

In the morning I set off again – along the autobahn into the Bohmerwald National Park (the German part of the Sumava) and then turned off towards the Czech border. This last leg of my journey was the most beautiful of all. Many of the forest trees were in blossom, everything looked newly washed. The weather was warm, but in some of the dips winter snow still lay where the sun had not got to them. The landscape became familiar – I was nearing home, following the northern shore of Lake Lipno and then the few miles north to Horice. I pulled up at the gate – I was home. Would I do it again? Possibly, but with someone with whom to share the journey.

Thaw Continued & Czech Driving Machismo

The thaw had the effect of melting the top layer of compacted snow on the roads leading to our village which then rucked up into tracks, below the snow was now ice. I therefore watched in awe as a number of Czech drivers attempted to drive up the hill to the village. It was essential to get enough speed up to keep the momentum going to the top but not too much that you lost control. Some made it, others made it half way and slid back and one drove his car into the pile of snow on the side and abandoned it.

But the prize for Czech driving machismo and bloody-mindedness had to go to the driver of the car who decided to drive to Horice Na Sumave via the little road. This road rises sharply as it goes out of the village and on this stretch is shaded by two lines of trees making the thawing influence of the sun intermittent. It is very narrow, only the width of one car. Add to this at the bottom of the hill as you exit the village there is a 90 degree turn, which means that you cannot get any momentum before you start on the hill. The final point to make is that this road only goes to Horice, which can be reached from our village via a better and easier road which goes downhill, and so any attempt to climb this hill was totally unnecssary.

But one Czech driver thought better. I watched him (I presume it was a him) make several attempts on the hill, the first time he got a third of the way before sliding backwards, the second halfway. He then disappeared for a while. Aha I thought he has realised the errors of his ways and is going the sensible route. Not a bit of it. There he was reversing (yes reversing) up the hill, again he made several attempts, but he did make it eventually. The very idea of attempting driving up that lane in those conditions was enough to make me shudder, but doing it while looking over one's shoulder hardly bears thinking about. Those mad Czech drivers!

Road Accidents

I was walking the road from Kajov to Chvalsiny, taking advantage of a cold brisk day with a gloriously bright sun, when I took this photo. The road is a not atypical one for these parts, lined on both sides by parades of trees and on an embankment that slopes steeply away into the river or the water meadows. This layout has its perils, the road is too narrow, barely wide enough (if at all) in places for two cars to meet each other and certainly not with a pedestrian in the road too. The road deceives the drivers into going too fast – something most Czechs do anyway – and on occasion into overtaking when one cannot see far enough ahead – again something Czech drivers do regularly. If one is unfortunate to meet such stupidity coming towards you, the closely planted trees and the embankment mean there is nowhere for your car to go to avoid an accident.

In all I counted three wayside memorials to lives lost on the four kilometre stretch I walked and numerous trees where the scarred bark told of other (hopefully less fatal) accidents. The memorials were marked with plaques and flowers. All spoke, as in this one shown here, of young lives cut short. And yet as I walked the cars still went too fast, several times I had to jump on to the verge. I do not doubt that there will be more memorials added to the road's deadly tally over the years. There are some calls for the trees to be cleared from the sides of these roads, but they are not fault, the drivers are. The trees have been there long before the speeding cars. And would removing them actually stop the accidents or might it even encourage more speeding?

Mystery car

I came across the old car mouldering in a timber yard on the edge of Horni Plana. It looked so neglected, so forlorn and yet you could see that it once had been a fine car. I showed this photo to my husband - who as a boy had swallowed the Observer Book of Automobiles whole and usually can still tell the make of car from a distance. At first he thought it was a Citroen, but then thought better and suggested it was a 1930's Tatra.

I appeal to anyone who knows to let us know one way or another. But, as this is a blog about the Czech Republic, the former Czechoslovakia and all things Czech, I shall assume it is a Tatra - as it allows me to blog about this fascinating car manufacturer. Its story is in some ways a mirror of the history of the Czech people. In the first part of the last century the Czechs were at the forefront of design and engineering. The Tatra is the world's third oldest car manufacturer and its car design and engineering were ahead of their time. The T77 launched in 1934 was the first production aerodynamic car with its dorsal rear fin and rear-mounted engine. It was to be very influential - Ferdinand Porsche used some of its design features in the more famous Volkswagen Beetle.

As with the wider history of the Czech Republic, this flowering of innovation came to an end under the German occupation. Whilst German officers enjoyed the car's speed, the company's
activity was restricted and its designs plundered in favour of German car companies. After the war the company was nationalised under the communists. Even under the communists the Czech company still managed to produce some fine cars; these were not for the proletariat but for the senior officials and Party elite. More recently the company has abandoned car production and focused exclusively on lorries. Despite all the problems of its past, Tatra has survived and is being rebuilt - rather like the country that spawned it.